For as far back as I can remember, I’ve always been afraid of mirrors. No I’m not scarred, I wasn’t terrified by some asshat older sibling. I just… found them uncomfortable, like deeply uncomfortable. I didn’t like staring into them. I didn’t like preening like so many children and older people tend to do. Not just mirrors, reflective surfaces, too. Especially TV screens. You know, like when they are off and you are left to stare into the inky blackness that seems to stretch on forever, and in your peripheral you see things? Probably the symptoms of a fertile mind, I’m sure. I don’t like bodies of water after dark or parking lots after a heavy rain for that reason either. Those however inspire a more primordial terror. Like something unfathomable is going to swallow you whole. For me, it always feels the universe from Seize the Night by Dean Koontz was real and hellish beings from other dimensions where just silently waiting in the wings to eat you alive.
Since we’re covering things I’m afraid of, I still sleep with a light on. I hate being in total darkness. I don’t shower at night, it gives me panic attacks, and I take baths over showers because I’m terrified of what could be on the other side of the curtain watching me. I don’t want surprised like that. I also have concerns about something, I always envision in my mind a pair of pale, long fingered hands with claw like nails grabbing my ankles and yanking me under the bed into nothingness. And Closets, there’s been too many times I’ve seen hands reach for mine from the damn things. Always a small child’s hand reaching for me. I don’t know what that is about.
I don’t know if I’m psychic or a schizophrenic. Lately, I’ve been hearing things in my apartment. It isn’t that old, it was built in 1999. It is three buildings set up in a horseshoe pattern around a parking lot. Repeat that two more times. When they were built, it was mostly countryside, now a bunch of housing developments have sprung up around it. I’ve been a resident here 3 years in the fall. Like I said, lately I’ve been hearing noises, like walking the floor above me when I’m in my room. There’s no third floor. I failed to mention these are townhouses. In the living room you hear walking on the second floor when no one is upstairs.
My spouse and I had made jokes it was probably just a really big racoon up there. Except the steps sound more like a person,… pacing. So we thought maybe it was the neighbors, it is an older building and we hear their closet doors open and close on the regular. Except, a lot of times they aren’t home when the pacing is going on.
Things go missing from time to time, but I’ve had that happen my whole life. Now I blame it on my teenager who sleep walks, he also sleep eats in the middle of the night. So maybe the milk being gone was him. Maybe the weird smell of hotdogs on fire coming from the crawlspace is just the neighbors. I can smell when they indulging in THAT herbal supplement and the shitty incense everyone tries to burn to cover up the smell. Which is more of a dead giveaway. It isn’t legal here… yet. I want to investigate.
In my mind’s theater I see myself going up to investigate and satisfy my curiosity. In reality I do not. I’m honestly afraid of what I will find. What if it is a vagrant? What if it is a pepping tom? Or like that video of the woman living in a man’s apartment and coming down at night to eat? What if it is just a raccoon of unusual size up there? What if its not? What if IT is something else entirely? Scarier still, what if it’s all in my head? Always a what if, so should I see if I have an “upstairs” neighbor or if I’m just paranoid?